Advancing photonics for ultrafast science and technology

Project title

Project description

Understanding the interaction of intense ultrashort light pulses with plasmas is a key requirement to advance many ground-breaking strong-field physics applications like high harmonics generation (HHG), attoscience, and lightwave electronics. Gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fibers (HC-PCF) have emerged in recent years as an ideal platform for this purpose. The tight confinement of high intensity few-cycle laser pulses over long distances has made it possible to study the coherent nonlinear interaction between light and photo-ionized plasmas in a well-controlled environment, which led to the generation of light with extreme properties both in the temporal and the spectral domain.In this project I propose to explore new regimes of light-plasma interaction by combining advancements in the state-of-the-art of few-cycle laser pulse amplification in optical fibers with new concepts of plasma generation in HC-PCF. Few cycle pulses possess an extremely large spectral bandwidth in the order of one optical octave that exceeds the linear gain-bandwidth of any known medium, making their amplification a challenging task that will be tackled in this project with innovative concepts in fiber-optic technology, which are based on fiber manufacturing technology developed at the University of Bern. The developed amplification systems address the current quest for high average power few-cycle pulse sources, triggered by the need to increase the photon flux for coherent XUV spectroscopy, imaging, and attoscience applications based on HHG, which suffers from low efficiency.Further I envisage to combine these novel sources with new possibilities for exciting in-fiber electric gas discharges in HC-PCF. This would create an innovative and extremely versatile photonic platform ideally suited for the fundamental studies of light-plasma interactions in regimes not currently accessible, and also enable the development of in-fiber gas lasers and other novel light sources in emerging spectral regions with high potential impact on fundamental science, biology, healthcare, and sensing applications.

Funded

Primary Conductor

Institute of Applied Physics, Lasers

Subject(s)

Dewey Decimal Classification::500 - Science::530 - Physics
Dewey Decimal Classification::600 - Technology::620 - Engineering

Keyword(s)

Ultrashort laser pulses
Nonlinear fiber optics
Ultrafast science
Light-plasma interaction
Optical fibers
Extreme light

Project Start Date

01-Jul-2019

Expected completion date

30-Jun-2024

Language(s)

en

Status

Active

Advancing photonics for ultrafast science and technology

Project Description